


they had all drowned

by cloverdale



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: War, black paladin lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 15:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16328735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloverdale/pseuds/cloverdale
Summary: What had happened to them? What had happened to the little girl with the big glasses and sandy hair that curled on freckled cheeks? What had happened to the boy who wore a bandana in his hair and had smiled back at the sunrise, equally as radiant?The Alteans had a saying.Age is not the number of times your planet has circled a star. It is how close you have walked to death.





	they had all drowned

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a very long time ago.... i just thought i’d post it.

They are standing in the ashes of an empire.

It is quiet.

Space is always quiet.

Quiet, and black, and silent, and endless . . .

Their leader stands tall. There is a weariness in his eyes, a wisdom beyond his years. He has lost his youth, his childhood to war.

At his side stands his princess. She is his princess, not by birth or blood, but by choice and duty. They are her subjects. Her only subjects.

She is all that is left of her people, and the Paladins are their legacy.

The Alteans had a saying.

Age is not the number of times your planet has circled a star. It is how close you have walked to death.

If age is how close he has walked to death, he is a god. He is endless. He is immortal.

They stand on an asteroid.

That’s all it’s ever been, in his lifetime. A chunk of rock spinning in space.

To his princess? This is what’s left of her home. They are standing in the graveyard of Altea.

Lance McClain bends down, and touches the rock beneath his feet.

The armor he wears in blue, but the rifle strapped to his chest is black.

It has been years since he was the pilot of the blue lion. Coran had once told him that in his native tongue, the name for the blue lion had meant  _ Mother Lion. _ She had Lance’s guide, his protector.

It has been years.

Lance is lost. He has been lost for so many years.

There is no room for people in war. There is the mission. There is the enemy. There is your team.

There has been no place in the universe for Lance McClain. They had needed a Blue Paladin, then a red one, and then a black one. He had answered that call. He had let Lance McClain drown in the shadows of Voltron.

They had all drowned.

What had happened to them? What had happened to the little girl with the big glasses and sandy hair that curled on freckled cheeks? What had happened to the boy who wore a bandana in his hair and had smiled back at the sunrise, equally as radiant?

Lance lost them.

He had been the laughter. He had been the smiles.

He had been the first to drown.

Lance cannot remember the years.

They had been children, once. They had walked a planet called Earth. They had loved. They had dreamed. 

He can still smell the ocean, feel the rain on his cheeks, his toes in the sand. He remember Cuba. The Garrison. The dream of flying the stars.

Earth, Cuba, the Garrison. They are places that exist only in his dreams.

Lance is sick of stars. Of space. It is forever, without end and without age. New stars mean more battles, new planets mean more destruction wraught. It is forever, and yet it has found no room for a boy like him. Room for him to live, room for him to be.

He used to have people. A family, parents and grandparents and siblings and nieces and nephews. They all had families.

Shiro and Keith still had each other. They have little else. None of Keith’s family had lived to see the far side of the war.

Lance had once promised it be Keith’s family. How doesn’t one have a family, be a family, after they have seen what they have seen, done what they have done?

(It has been years since they celebrated victories. Everything was a loss. While the liberated had cheered, the Paladins had mourned, mourned for the destruction under the feet of Voltron.)

They have won, though. They have won the final battle.

_ The war to end all wars. _

That’s what they called the Coalition’s fight, one some worlds. The War to End All Wars. Capital letters and all.

His people had branded a war the War to End All Wars. By the time Lance was born, it was called the First World War. First, because soon after, they waged another.

This will not be the end of wars. The wars have no end.

And Voltron will fight. Voltron will always fight. They are Paladins, bound by a holy oath.

And he is the head of Voltron.

No. He is not the head of Voltron. He is what is left of a shadow, the last shadow of something that shines so bright.

Lance McClain is twenty-one years old. Lance McClain is gone. Lance McClain has drowned.

The Blue Paladin of Voltron, the Guardian of the Sky, stands in the graveyard of a world he never knew. His Paladins are at his side, pink, white, red, green, and yellow.

They stand in the ashes of an empire.

The war is done.

They are lost.


End file.
